with Captain Rheid.  He had been given up for lost when he was young and when he came back he found his wife married to another man, but she gave up the second husband and went back to the first.  She was dead when Mrs. Rheid met him; she said he was a very sad man.  His ship was wrecked on some coast, I’ve forgotten where, and he was made to work in a mine until he was rescued.  I think I would have remained dead to her if she had forgotten me like that.  But isn’t this a long letter?  Morris has made me promise to write regularly to him; I told him he had never given me a Holland plate two hundred years old, but he says he will go to Holland and buy me one and that is better.

“I am glad Hollis wrote such a long letter to his mother if he could not come home.  I wish he would write to her oftener; I do not think she is quite satisfied to have him write to me instead.  I will write to him to-morrow, but I haven’t anything to say, I have told you everything.  O, Linnet, how happy I shall be when your school days are over.  Miss Prudence shall have the next letter; I have something to ask her, as usual.

“The end of my story in three volumes isn’t very startling.  But this snow-storm is.  If we hadn’t everything under cover we would have to do without some things.

“Yours,

“MARJORIE”

XIII.

A WEDDING DAY.

“A world-without-end bargain.”—­Shakespeare.

A young girl stood in the doorway, shading her eyes with her hand as she gazed down the dusty road; she was not tall or slight, but a plump, well-proportioned little creature, with frank, steadfast eyes, a low, smooth forehead with brown hair rippling away from it, a thoughtful mouth that matched well with the eyes; an energetic maiden, despite the air of study that somehow surrounded her; you were sure her voice would be sweet, and as sure that it would be sprightly, and you were equally sure that a wealth of strength was hidden behind the sweetness.  She was only eighteen, eighteen to-day, but during the last two years she had rapidly developed into womanhood.  The master told Miss Prudence this morning that she was trustworthy and guileless, and as sweet and bright as she was good; still, he believed, as of old, that she did not quite know how to take her own part; but, as a woman, with a man to fight for her, what need had she of fighting?  He would not have been at all surprised had he known that she had chosen, that morning, a motto, not only for her new year, but, as she told Morris, for her lifetime:  “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”  And he had said:  “May I fight for you, too, Marjorie?” But she had only laughed and answered:  “We don’t live in the time of the Crusades.”